Numerous fuels are used for internal combustion engines including gasoline, diesel, natural gas, liquid natural gas (LNG), liquid petroleum (LP), Methane, ethanol, hydrogen, etc. Unfortunately, different fuels have different power output, fuel efficiency, cost, emissions, and regional availability. As such, it may be desirable to run an engine on LNG but only diesel or gasoline is available in a particular area. As such, it may not be able to get the benefits of running on LNG in that particular area. Further, if one fuel has a much greater power output but a poorer emissions than another fuel, it is typically necessary to compromise on one of the two categories in designing the engine when using current one-side engines. This may be very problematic for over-the-road heavy trucks that have very long trips where high power is only needed for a small portion of the trip and it is desirable to remain within ever increasing emissions standards.
Further, typical one-sided pistons only have a power stroke in one direction and rely on angular momentum and kinetic energy of the engine to drive the piston when power is not being supplied to the piston during an ignition portion of the engine cycle. Due to this, a period of time when additional power could be added to the system is being wasted.
The present invention provides improvements over the current state of the art for internal combustion engines.